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Thursday, May 15, 2014

Haven't been blogging lately, idk, my heart's just not really in it anymore... Either that or I'm just plain lazy lol.

Went on my 3rd trip to Japan recently. I was really excited to upload and share my pictures when I got back but then the thought of having to import all the images, resize them so they can be uploaded to photobucket etc... Man, blogging can be such hard work, especially when no one is paying you to do so lol :p

Oh well, I do enjoy looking back at some of my old entries sometimes and reliving the happy moments. It seems a shame to just leave them on my hard drive where I'm less likely to go through them.

This time I got my plane tickets from Scoot's sale. Since I had classes to attend, I had to pick travel dates that fell during my term break. However, it also turned out to be Golden Week in Japan fml. I didn't realize until I really started to plan for the trip. Really don't recommend travelling during this time period. Many shops offer some discounts or specials for Golden Week, but that's about the only plus about travelling during Golden Week. There's huge crowds at the tourist attractions and long queues for the popular restaurants and cafes. I spent about 1.5 hours waiting to get into Sapporo Beer Garden's Genghis Khan restaurant ;_; (more on that later).

We picked the Super Seats, paid $25 extra each way. I think it was quite worth the money. Seats were really comfortable. I really like that you can pick a comfier seat by paying a little more. Unlike a regular airline where all the seats in economy are standard.

Transit in Taipei. Basically you took all your carry on stuff, got off the plane, go through the security and wait to get back on the same plane again. Kind of a pain, really. Guess it can't be helped when you are travelling budget. One bad thing about it is you can't buy any liquids at NRT when you are coming back from Tokyo. Since you have to go through the airport security while at transit in Taipei, you can't have any liquids over 100ml with you. I saw one person who had bought something in Narita and she was stopped at security. Basically you either had to try and mail the item to yourself using the very tight 1 hour transit time or you had to throw it away.

Finally arrived at Tokyo's Narita airport and went to collect my b-mobile visitor SIM with 1GB prepaid data at the airport's post office on the 3rd floor. Luckily I saved the APN settings on b-mobile's website to my phone while I was still in Singapore, cos no instructions were provided with the product -_-"

After frantically restarting my phone a couple of times, I finally managed to get it to work and was able receive 4G service on my phone. If anyone's wondering, it works with Samsung Galaxy S4.

I would definitely buy this again the next time I go to Japan. It was extremely useful since I understand zero Japanese, so asking for directions wasn't always an option. I used it mainly for Google Maps, checking train times and looking up random stuff on the internet. Used up about 500MB of data at the end of 10 days.

For our first meal in Tokyo, we headed to Toriton Kaiten Sushi at the relatively new Tokyo Skytree. It's a highly popular conveyor belt sushi place known for fresh ingredients and affordable prices. Since we went at about 3 in the afternoon, there was no queue to get in.

My fave - Unagi!!

Medium fatty tuna and uni. First time trying uni and I'm in love!! Medium fatty tuna was ok, but otoro is still the best obv.

Saw the guy next to us having this and immediately said 'I'll have what he's having,' kekekeke

Total came up to less than SGD60 for the meal. Quite a good price imo!!

A nice restaurant we saw on the way...

View from Starbucks.

Queue to go up the Skytree. It took about 30 minutes to get the tickets. The queue was loooooooong but it moved along pretty quickly.

The lift to go up...

The view!!

When I was at the bottom looking up the Skytree, I was struck by how tall it was. It looked really magnificent. The view from the top was awesome, too. It's always nice to have a chance to overlook the whole city and Tokyo has to be one of my favourite cities.

Going further up to the 450th floor.

Inside the second lift to the highest floor. Reminded me of the Tower of Terror in Disneyland @_@

Not for the faint hearted.

♥ Sunset ♥

City starting to light up.

Sky has finally turned dark.

Looking a bit chui since we came here after spending the night on the plane.

Everyone was crowding here trying to take pictures.

Went down and immediately went to my favourite Quil Fait Bon which I've been dying to eat again after trying it my last trip. Really wanted the white strawberry tart but sadly it was sold out.

Skytree themed.

The skytree toothpick thingy that we kept ^_^

Skytree exclusive.

Q-pot. Everything looked soooooo pretty, I really wanted to buy something but it was so bloody expensive!! Not sure why, what is it made of?

An ice cream shop. I wanted to try it but was still full from the tarts. Decided to come back later after some shopping but unfortunately it was closed by that time :( Wish Tokyo was like Seoul where many shops stay open well into the night.